


To Carry and To Keep

by Meduseld



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Caleb has a terrible day, Character Study, Guilt, M/M, Missing Scene, Sadness, They could be together or just bros or pre relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 05:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11247078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Caleb hears his best friend is dead.





	To Carry and To Keep

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scene from 1x01, for a Turn Secret Santa thing.

Caleb can’t remember his mother’s face.

He’d been five years old when she died and the memories have blurred and faded. He can almost remember the fabric of her dress pressed up against his face as he hugged her legs. Her laugh maybe, in the next room.

(Maybe they’re not real, the memories, maybe he’s just cobbled them together from what he saw of everyone else’s’ mothers, the things he thought he should have).

It’s all he can think about as he rides, on a horse he commandeered after he heard the news.

He can’t quite remember the moments, the sequence between the words falling from some major’s lips and the jarring thuds of the horse’s gallop underneath him.

A troop of dragoons slaughtered in New Jersey, ambushed by Queen’s Rangers. (Underneath the maybe memories of a woman long since in the ground is a steady beat of _ben ben ben_ ).

His eyes squint hard against the rushing wind and the mist in his eyes isn’t tears. He doesn’t cry. Can’t remember the last time he did (that’s a lie).

He jerks the reins hard when he hits the mud near the river’s mouth, his breath knocked out of him, chest slammed suddenly against the horse’s sweaty neck.

The water is so red with blood it brings to mind the Old Testament, the plagues of Egypt, Reverend Tallmadge’s voice ringing from the pulpit (and Ben’s small hand in his, tucked under the pews, because Caleb didn’t need to say it frightened him).

The faces on the bodies blur when he tries to look at them and he blinks hard. It doesn’t say much that Ben doesn’t seem to be here. (The back of his head aches, phantom pain).

The tide has come and gone at least once.

He traces the rangers as best he can, from the dying remains of their fire and the thick steps of their boots. There’s nothing he can use, the greenery too thick, too resilient.

(They’d kept her body in the cellar, while his father’s ship came back from the Sound).

They’ve gone back behind enemy lines, for now. And it’s hard to see in this light.

(Hard to focus with the choked whooshing breathing he can’t stop hearing. It’s him, but is it now or then?).

His horse whickers softly and Caleb walks it back towards camp, his thoughts fluttering like shocked birds. His legs feel like lead and for the first time since he was a boy he wishes for his uncle Lucas (thin soft fingers on his shoulder, hands as light as birds, the only thing keeping Caleb from floating away).

 

When he can see the flickering lights of the nighttime fires, he realizes he’s done it wrong.

He should have ridden for Setauket.

He should have been man enough to tell the Reverend directly. (Caleb’s father died when he was fifteen. The sun had been harsh and Ben’s hand, cool as a river stone on his elbow, felt like the only real thing in the world).

But it’s too late, some drummer boy whose name he can’t remember is running up to him and he thinks, with the distant detachment that men who’ve never been to sea use to talk about the weather, _I’m going to be court martialed_.

And then the boy actually speaks.

He’s off his horse before he knows it, the words still dropping inside him like stones in a well, hands tight on the boy’s shoulders. “Where?”

(His voice is so harsh and wasted it startles him. He sounds like his father)

 

The big house commandeered by General Scott is on the other side of camp, a long walk even without have to weave around the men and their tents and horses.

He thinks it’s the fastest anyone’s crossed it, his legs working like they’re a thing apart from him, pumping with the sinewy grace of hungry animals.

(For a few days it hadn’t feel real. Like she’d walk back into the room any moment and explain)

 

The house is before him between one moment and the next, and he has to drop into the mud, sliding into its wooden side with a dull thump. He trembles there for a moment, swallowing back lungfuls of air and blinking hard. His chest is full of strangled howls, wild and mournful like a wolf separated from its pack. He’s too hot and too cold, his skin too tight to hold him inside.

(The coffin had made it real, and the dark black hole in the ground like a mouth). He presses his forehead to the flaking paint and tries to remember how to breathe.

General Scott storms out a few moments later, a blue bird with ruffled feathers.

He doesn’t notice Caleb and it’s just- _just like_ (his father standing still as statue next to him, eyes fixed on the grave).

 

He stumbles up the steps with legs like a newborn calf’s, hanging onto the doorframe for balance.

Ben whirls around in his chair, golden hair flying, furious and _alive_ and Caleb’s knees give out under him.

From this angle it’s suddenly like - ( _He’s five years old and his mother is in a wooden box._

_She’s been dead for days and stored away somewhere beneath his bedroom with the meat and nuts she’d stored away for the winter and Caleb’s sleep is full of her phantom breathing._

_His father is beside him, in the same clothes he’d been wearing that morning when he’d come off his ship onto the docks; smelling of brine and seaweed._

_Reverend Tallmadge’s voice rings clear and calm like it does on Sundays, when his mother would dress him up in the clothes he’s wearing now and if he didn’t fidget during the service she’d give him a sweet._

_Only now his mother is in the ground and it looks so small, too small for her and her big hair and her big skirts and suddenly Caleb can’t hear the Reverend over the gush of his own wet sobs and can’t see through the fat drops in his eyes._

_His father’s rough hand cuffs the back of his head hard enough to make his ears ring, but he can still make out the meaning._

_He’s a man now, and he cannot cry. He bites his lip to stop and tucks his forehead against the spindly bones of his Uncle Lucas’ wrist, his whisper light thumb rubbing Caleb’s shoulder._

That memory, he thinks is real.)

 

-and then he feels the floor bite into his knees and the press of Ben’s thumb against his cheek.

They fit together awkwardly and Ben’s hair gets into his mouth and he half-chokes, but neither of them break their clutch, Caleb’s head tucked against his neck. He can taste skin and mud and blood trickled through rough cloth and then there’s the sharp tang of tears.

Ben’s shushing him, over and over, fingers raking through his hair and for one terrifying moment he’s ashamed.

But he can feel the steady beat of a heart against his cheek and the soft rocking of their bodies on the hard wooden floor and around him arms strong enough to hold.

And it’s too much.

Or just enough.

Caleb drops his head and weeps.

Ben doesn’t let go.


End file.
